Mirror Tree – 300 Miles
Genre: Psychedelic Rock, Lo-fi Rock, Indie Rock
Similar artists: King Gizzard & The Lizzard Wizard, Caribou, CAN, Tame Impala, Stereolab, Dungen
The prog rockers went to college and proceeded to complicate their music as much as was humanly possible. The hippies started hitting the hard stuff and proceeded to try and confuse their audiences as much as possible.
A new breed then appeared and they were willing to split the difference. They certainly didn’t look like the kind of folks a retail agency might consider hiring. However, they showed a great interest in learning the intricacies of playing music and producing a lot of it along the way. Out of this crop of bands, none are more hard-working and lysergically motivated than King Gizzard & The Lizzard Wizard.
They have their disciples, and some of them are looking to stretch things further than their teachers. U.S. group Mirror Tree is one of the more convincing modern hippie-prog groups. This can be witnessed with their single 300 Miles, a hazy feast of psych-rock, and world music served with a generous portion of hash brownies.
Everyone Is Dirty – My Neon’s Dead
Genre: Post-grunge, Grunge, Alternative Rock
The greatest people in any field are the ones that make what they are doing look easy. These people are able to succeed in reducing an idea to its bare elements where others might find themselves needing to spend a good chunk of their life trying to narrow down, isolate and reinterpret.
In rock, perhaps, no other band made it look as easy as the Pixies. That is one of the reasons why their sound inspired hordes of groups that followed, Nirvana in particular. However, what came easily to them was a result of the built-in quirks of the band members and their, often tense, interactions.
Pixies peaked early but were fully recognized for their efforts later in their career. With this in mind, it is refreshing to see a new generation of groups digging deep into the sonic dynamics that made that quartet great. Everyone Is Dirty’s My Neon’s Dead sounds like the kind of tune that Steve Albini recorded Kim Deal playing, that was left off an official release at the request of Francis Black, and that’s still left floating in the universe. Great news that someone spotted it and pulled it down.
